Why You Do NOT Need an Expensive Website
Many of my Web-Designer friends will hate me for this, but as I write this post I’ve got my clients’ best interest in mind.
When starting a new business, many entrepreneurs want to build a fancy, high-class, static website that will showcase their competence and professionalism. They are ready to invest a lot of money in this website, and they are so convinced about it that they won’t listen to anything else.
However, they don’t consider these two aspects:
- as they get to know their clients’ needs better, they may want to change something about their offerings.
- any minor change in the website will cost them a lot of time and money.
Therefore, when building your website, answer this question:
What do you want your website to do for your business?
a. Simply tell people about your business, as if it were an internet brochure.
b. Inform visitors about upcoming events, product launches, etc. and give them the opportunity to be reminded about them / to register for them.
c. Lead visitors to get in touch with you and to eventually buy from you.
If you answer “a”, it probably means that you get all of your clients through the traditional, “offline” channels, such as through referrals, etc. Then your expensive and beautiful static website is just what you need.
However, if you answer “b” or c”, you need a different type of website.
The Lead Generating Website
The lead generating website is a dynamic website, or even a professional blog, that allows you to:
- interact with your potential clients, for example through a blog.
- regularly add new, relevant content, such as special events, product launches, etc.
- capture your visitors’ email addresses, for example through a Sign-Up box, in exchange of something that’s valuable for your potential clients, for free. This will help you to start a valuable communication with your subscribers.
- and sure, to tell people about who you are and what your potential clients can expect from your business.
Business is in constant movement
In order to attract new customers and clients, you need to interact with them. Constantly, regularly. You need to understand what your target market wants, you need to give them something “they can use”. And you need to stay in touch.
A beautiful, static website doesn’t allow that.
What if you already have an expensive, static website?
If you already have an expensive, static website, that’s fine. You’ve got something that looks very professional. Keep it.
But besides it, I urge you to consider starting a blog or a dynamic micro-website, and to start communicating and interacting with your audience on a regular basis.
There are several ways to build a free blog, or to turn your blog into a professional-looking website for very little money. There are lots of free templates, and very professional-looking templates that cost less than $ 100.
For better results, you can hire a professional web-designer to set it all up for you. Just make sure that you or your assistant will be able to easily update your blog or website at any time.
Here a few possibilities:
- www.wordpress.org for free WordPress that you can turn into a professional website (find a hosting company + download and install the free WordPress)
- www.typepad.com for free and business blogs
- www.ithemes.com for professional-looking templates based on WordPress
What are your immediate thoughts on what you just read?
What kind of website do you have? Is it getting you clients, and the kind of clients you want?
I’d love to hear from you, please leave your comment below or contact me.
Have a great day!
Myriam
About the Author
Myriam Callegarin helps global corporate managers and entrepreneurs to successfully navigate the challenges of career and business reinvention. Find practical tools and inspiration in the Resource Center.
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I don´t agree.
if you start blogging you are one thousands of bloggers. its cheap – okay, but you are member of a big internet company like facebook, wordpress – you are not unique for your customers. people maybe think you are a private blogger or do some fun – not business.
the better solution is to integrate a blog system in the professional expensive unique website.
think about it :-)
Greetings from Germany,
Alex
As one of the “web designer friends” that you are referring to, I want to compliment you on an excellent article Myriam!
Many small business owners spend too much effort and expense on a fancy website rather than focusing on getting maximum ROI for their marketing dollar.
For small companies without an online presence a simple blog site or facebook page (complimented by an email newsletter campaign) can not only be sufficient but it can achieve better results.
Hi Alex (Martineschledde),
In business, the main focus is on sales. And sales happen when you manage to build a relationship with your prospective clients, when they decide that what you offer can solve their problems or fulfill their desires.
An expensive static website doesn’t allow you to build that relationship. A static website is just a “photograph” of your business.
Sure, if you’ve got a lot of money, a blog integrated in an expensive website can be a great solution.
But many new business owners get stuck on this “website issue”. They believe they need an expensive website to get started: this is not true. Nowadays it’s possible to build a highly professional and even unique web-presence without having to spend your entire start-up budget on an expensive website.
As Alex (Kahl) points out, it’s a matter of ROI. What gives you the highest return on investment, i.e. buying clients? An expensive static website, or an active (and interactive) web-presence?
Whichever gives you the highest ROI is better for your business :-)
Have a great day Alex & Alex!
Myriam
Hello Myriam,
I’m the webdesigner of EuropeanPWN and many other clients and I don’t hate you at all. Thank you for this interesting and useful article!
My first question that arised was: WHAT is an expensive website : 500€, 1500€, 4000€ or more?
Nowadays everybody is part of an online community (e.g. EuropeanPWN) or at one of the famous social networks (Facebook, Viadeo, LinkedIn, Xing, etc.) and we buy our books at AMAZON & Co, we use Mappy.com to get to our next meeting and we find quickly an “app” on our Smartphone for our different needs, we book our flights/trains online, etc…. and it works so fine!
Inspired by all these well designed websites and interactive internet technology its understandable that we want to present our business website almost the same. > Why can’t I…?
But we should not forget that these websites have not been developed in some days. Years of experience, know how, a team of experts and an interesting budget is necessary to create these websites/portals and make them constantly work.
Since years I’m testing “prêt à porter” website creation solutions/tools for the none-experienced web user, but so far I did not find any which could produce a nice (stylisch-minimalistic-designed), simple to use and interactive corporate business websites.
Wordpress is the most sophisticated blog software and it’s great, but you need a webdesiger/developer to transform it to a business website with an individual design, even using the famous “themes” which are great.
A blog makes your (corporate) business web site alive and gives your clients additional information an what you do, events and information behind the scenes – a business website should give quickly an answer to the user on: What you offer, WHO you are and WHERE you are in max. 2 clicks.
My clients are never happy with a “standard” solution and I don’t like to say: “This is not possible why, …” because of…. plugin x does not work here, etc.
Bref,… it depends always on what you’re aiming at and what the currrent web technologie is able to do for a certain budget.
We offer different solutions for different budgets but they have to be : nice, pro and functional.
I’ll hope we’ll meet soon,
Best, Andrea
http://www.anmadesign.com
WEBDESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
info@anmadesign.com
8, Place Gabriel Péri, 92000 Nanterre
+33 1 47 25 94 75
Great article Myriam. Establishing a blog or domain online should not be expensive. I offer clients a ready to go site in one day that is simple to navigate using the Word Press platform. I do strongly suggest using a paid Word Press site because you have so many features that a free site doesn’t have.
I have much experience setting up Word Press blogs and offer very affordable hosting along with all of the marketing tools needed to establish your brand online. I highly recommend having an autoresponder ( included in your plan with me ) so you can build a list and share content with your audience.
Hi Andrea,
Thank you so much for your valuable comments! It’s great to see that there are “advanced) Web-Designers and Web-Developers like you who understand both the marketing AND the practical needs of their clients. Believe me, that’s not always the case! (But I’m sure you know that :-)
I totally agree with you, it depends on what you’re aiming at and what budget you have and what kind of technologies you can/want to use within that budget.
The reason for my thread is to help mainly solo-entrepreneurs see that they can get their business up and running even without an expensive website.
There are several solo-entrepreneurs and small business owners who really get stuck when it comes to building their website:
* they want a fancy website because they believe it’s essential
* but they are afraid of spending those € 2.000 to € 6.000 for it
* they don’t know whether it’s worth it
* other options sound too cheap / too complicated / too unprofessional
And they spend weeks or even months on this item. Getting stuck often means that business gets stuck as well. Because then they miss focusing on their active marketing and sales activities.
Of course, the ideal solution would be to have a beautiful, highly effective and professional website with a professional active and engaging blog.
But if the budget does not allow this, there are other options (that I described) that can help an entrepreneur’s business to take off and to achieve great results all the same.
I would also like to add that I have seen some highly successful entrepreneurswho who have decided not to build a “classic website” at all, even if they definitely have the budget for it. That’s their personal strategic decision, and it works for them.
Have a great week-end, and yes, I would also be very happy to meet you! Maybe we manage to get together at one the upcoming EPWA events.
Greetings from Italy,
Myriam
Here’s my open invitation to web-developers!
While I personally believe it’s better to go either for the top, high-end option or for the low-cost “do-it-yourself” one (in-between solutions are often the worst ones, even though I may be wrong…), I think many entrepreneurs would benefit from the know-how of expert web developers.
For example, it would be great to know things like:
* What makes an excellent web-developer, in nowadays’ internet world?
* If entrepreneurs want to avoid the common pitfalls: What should they look for, when choosing a web-developer?
Thanks in advance to all web-design/development experts!
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